With the upcoming administration changes, it seems safe to predict that we will see a shift in the use of new Web 2.0 social media technologies by the U.S. Federal Government. Much like the Apple/PC commercials, if the Government doesn’t start to embrace, use, and empower their employees to get involved in the social network and media areas, they will start to look more and more like Mr. PC, instead of looking like the younger, hipper, and more knowledgeable Mr. Apple.

Dr. Mark Drapeau points this out very well in his article Government 2.0: How Social Media Could Transform Gov PR on the PBS website. Dr. Drapeau explains the issue of the Federal Government embracing this change the following way:

…governments are very different from private corporations…Bureaucracy and entrenched special interests make collaboration between agencies difficult…Constant turnover of elected officials and political appointees as well as year-to-year budget concerns make long-range planning nearly a fantasy.

But the Government will have to change in order to keep up with the industry around it, which is the same industry that supports it. As industry embraces Web 2.0 and starts to encourage more communication to be passed through these technologies, the Government can’t afford to stay behind. Not everyone in Government is behind the Web 2.0 curve. The Coast Guard recently embraced using Facebook to communicate. Collen Graffy, the current Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, and Rep. John Culberson (R-Tex) use Twitter to keep people up-to-date on what they are doing.

Dr. Drapeau points out that the Government can use these new social network tools for PR to:

(share information) between agencies; collaborate with outside partners like humanitarian workers; public outreach and crowdsourcing (def. the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people, in the form of an open call)…engage people in meaningful ways, understand public sentiment, recruit and retain employees, and harness…collective intelligence.

At a time when it is critical for information to flow quickly and for issues to be discussed in a timely manner, it is also time for the Federal Government to think in a new way about communication and to see that, while there may be risk in delivering information quickly over the Web 2.0 space, the positives surely outweigh the negatives when it comes to the results of playing in this brave new world.